West Java killed at least 268 people, many of them children, with 151 still missing, disaster relief officials said on Tuesday, as rescuers searched the rubble of destroyed buildings for survivors.
The shallow 5.6-magnitude quake struck Indonesia’s most populous province on Monday afternoon, causing significant damage to the town of Cianjur, about 75 kilometres southeast of the capital, Jakarta, and burying at least one village under a landslide.
Disaster agency chief Suharyanto told reporters that more than 1,000 people had been injured, 58,000 displaced and 22,000 houses damaged.
Landslides and rough terrain hampered rescue efforts on Tuesday, said Henri Alfiandi, head of the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas).
“The challenge is the affected area is spread out … On top of that, the roads in these villages are damaged,” Alfiandi told reporters.
Many of the victims were children who had been at school at the time the quake hit, he said.
While strong earthquakes of magnitude 6 or 7 are relatively common in Indonesia, often off-shore where fault lines run, Monday’s quake of a lower magnitude had such deadly consequences because it struck on land at a relatively shallow depth.
